On the Question of Our Factory Statistics

Written: Written in August 1898
Published:
Published in 1898 in the collection Economic Studies and Essays, by Vladimir Ilyin.
Published according to the text in the collection.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1964,
Moscow,
Volume 4,
pages 13-45.
Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. Cymbala and D. WaltersPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2003).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
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TheRussian reading public displays a lively interest in the question of
our factory statistics and in the chief conclusions to be drawn from
them. This interest is quite understandable, for the question is connected
with the more extensive one of the “destiny of capitalism in
Russia.” Unfortunately, however, the state of our factory statistics does
not correspond to the general interest in their data. This branch of
economic statistics in Russia is in a truly sad state, and still sadder,
perhaps, is the fact that the people who write about statistics often
display an astounding lack of understanding of the nature of the figures
they are analysing, their authenticity and their suitability for drawing
certain conclusions. Such precisely is the estimate that must be made of
Mr. Karyshev’s latest work, first published in Izvestia Moskovskovo
Selskokhozyaistvennovo Instituta (4th year, Book 1) and then as a
separate booklet with the high-sounding title Material on the Russian
National Economy. I. Our Factory Industry in the Middle Nineties
(Moscow, 1898). Mr. Karyshev tries, in this essay, to draw conclusions
from the latest publication of the Department of Commerce and Manufactures
on our factory
industry.[1]
We shall make a detailed
analysis of Mr. Karyshev’s conclusions and, especially, of his methods. We
think that an analysis of this sort will have significance, not only in
deter mining the way in which the material is treated by Professor
So-and-So (for this a review of a few lines would suffice), but also in
determining the degree of reliability of our factory statistics, for which
deductions they are suitable and for which they are unsuitable, what the
most important requirements of our factory statistics are and the tasks of
those who study them.

Asits name implies, the source used by Mr. Karyshev contains a list of
factories in the Empire for the year 1894-95. The publication of a full
list of all factories (i.e., of relatively large industrial
establishments, with varying conceptions of what is to be considered
large) is not new to our literature. Since 1881 Messrs. Orlov and Budagov
have compiled a Directory of Factories and Works the last (third)
edition of which was issued in 1894. Much earlier, in 1869, a list of
factories was printed in the notes accompanying the statistical tables on
industry in the first issue of the Ministry of Finance Yearbook.
The reports which factory owners are by law obliged to submit annually to
the Ministry provided the material for all these publications. The new
publication of the Department of Commerce and Manufactures differs from
former publications of this type in its somewhat more extensive
information, but at the same time it has tremendous shortcomings from
which the earlier ones did not suffer and which greatly complicate its
utilisation as material on factory statistics. In the introduction to the
List there is a reference to the unsatisfactory condition of
these statistics in the past which thereby defines the purpose of the
publication—to serve precisely as material for statistics and not
merely as a reference book. But the List, as a statistical
publication, amazes one by the complete absence of any sort of summarised
totals. It is to be hoped that a publication of this sort, the first of
its kind, will also be the last statistical publication without
summaries. The huge mass of raw material in the form of piles of figures
is useless ballast in a reference book. The introduction to the
List sharply criticises the reports previously submitted to the
Ministry by factory owners on the grounds that they “consisted of
confusing in formation, always one and the same, which was repeated from
year to year and did not allow even the quantity of goods produced to be
accurately determined, whereas production figures as complete and reliable
as possible are an urgent
necessity” (p. 1). We shall certainly not say a word in defence of
the absolutely outmoded system of our former factory statistics that were
purely
pre-Reform,[2]
both as to organisation and as to quality. But,
unfortunately, there is scarcely any noticeable improvement in
their present condition. The gigantic List just published still
does not give us the right to speak of any serious changes in the old
system admitted by all to be useless. The reports “did not allow
even the quantity of goods produced to be accurately
determined.”... Indeed, in the latest List there is no
information whatsoever on the quantity of goods, although Mr. Orlov’s
Directory, for example, gave this information for a very large
number of factories, and in some branches of industry for almost all
factories, so that in the summarised table there is information on the
quantity of the product (for the leather, distilling, brick, cereals,
flour milling, wax, lard, flax-scutching, and brewery industries). And it
was from the old reports that the Directory material was
compiled. The List does not give any information on machinery
employed, although the Directory gave this information for some
branches of industry. The introduction describes the changes that have
occurred in our factory statistics in this way: formerly, factory owners
supplied information through the police according to “a brief and
insufficiently clear programme” and no one checked the
information. “Material was obtained from which no more or less
precise conclusions could be drawn” (p. 1). Now a new and much more
detailed programme has been compiled and the gathering and checking of
factory statistical information have been entrusted to the factory
inspectors. At first glance one might think that we now have the right to
expect really acceptable data, since a correct programme and provision for
checking the data are two very important conditions for successful
statistics. In actual fact,how ever, these two features are still in their
former primitively chaotic state. The detailed programme with an
explanation is not published in the introduction to the List,
although statistical methodology requires the publication of the programme
according to which the data were gathered. We
shall see from the following analysis of the List material that the
basic questions of programme for factory statistics still remain
entirely unclarified. With regard to checking the data, here is a statement
by a person engaged in the practical side of this
process—Mr. Mikulin, Senior Factory Inspector of Kherson
Gubernia,[3]
who has published a book containing an analysis of statistical data gathered
according to the new system in Kherson Gubernia.

“Itproved impossible to make a factual check of all the figures in
the reports submitted by owners of industrial establishments and they
were, therefore, returned for correction only in those cases when
comparison with the data of similar establishments or with information
obtained during an inspection of the establishments showed obvious
inconsistencies in the answers. In any case, responsibility for the
correctness of the figures for each establishment con lamed in the lists
rests with those who submitted them” (Factory and Artisan Industry
in Kherson Gubernia, Odessa, 1897, preface. Our italics). And so,
responsibility for the accuracy of the figures, as before, still rests
with the factory owners. Representatives of the Factory Inspectorate were
not only unable to check all the figures, but, as we shall see below, were
even unable to ensure that they were uniform and could be compared.

Later,we shall give full details of the shortcomings of the List
and the material it uses. Its chief shortcoming, as we have noted, is the
complete absence of summaries (private persons who compiled the
Directory drew up summaries and expanded them with each
edition). Mr. Karyshev, availing himself of the collaboration of two other
people, conceived the happy idea of filling this gap, at least in part,
and of compiling summaries on our factory industry according to the
List. This was a very useful undertaking, and every one would
have been grateful for its achievement, if ... if Mr. Karyshev, firstly,
had published even a few of
the obtained results in their entirety and if, secondly, he had not
displayed, in his treatment of the material, a lack of criticism bordering
on high-handedness. Mr. Karyshev was in a hurry to draw conclusions before
he had studied the material attentively and before his statistical
processing was anything like
“thorough,”[4]
so that naturally he made
a whole series of the most curious errors.

Letus begin with the first, basic question in industrial statistics: what
establishments should come under the heading of “factories”?
Mr. Karyshev does not even pose this question; he seems to assume that a
“factory” is some thing quite definite. As far as the
List is concerned, he asserts, with a boldness worthy of better
employment, that in contrast to former publications this one registers not
only large establishments but all factories. This
assertion, which the author repeats twice (pp. 23 and 34), is
altogether untrue. Actually the reverse is the case; the
List merely registers larger establishments as compared
with former publications on factory statistics. We shall now explain how
It is that Mr. Karyshev could “fail to notice” such a
“trifle”; but first let us resort to historical
reference. Prior to the middle eighties our factory statistics did not
include any definitions or rules that limited the concept of
factory to the larger industrial establishments. Every type of industrial
(and artisan) establishment found its way into “factory”
statistics; this, it goes without saying, led to terrific chaos in the
data, since the full registration of all such establishments, by the
employment of existing forces and means (i.e., with out a correct
industrial census), is absolutely out of the question. In some gubernias
or in some branches of industry hundreds and thousands of the tiniest
establishments were included, while in others only the larger
“factories” were listed. It was, therefore, natural that the
people who first tried to make a scientific analysis of the data contained
in our factory statistics (in the sixties) turned all their attention to
this question and directed all their efforts to separating the
branches for which there were more or less reliable data from those for
which the data were absolutely unreliable, to separating establishments
large enough to enable the obtainment of satisfactory data from those too
small to yield satisfactory data.
Bushen,[5]
Bok,[6]
and
Timiryazev[7]
provided such valuable criteria on all these
questions that, had they been carefully observed and developed by the
compilers of our factory statistics, we should now have, in all
probability, some very acceptable data. But in actual fact all these
criteria remained, as usual, a voice crying in the wilderness, and our
factory statistics have remained in their former chaotic state. From 1889
the Department of Commerce and Manufactures began its publication of the
Collection of Data on Factory Industry in Russia (for 1885 and
the following years). A slight step forward was made in this publication:
the small establishments, i.e.,. those with an output valued at less than
1,000 rubles, were excluded. It goes without saying that this standard was
too low and too indefinite; it is ridiculous even to think of the
lull registration of all industrial establishments with
an output valued at more than that amount as long as the information is
collected by the police. As before, some gubernias and some branches of
industry included a mass of small establishments with outputs ranging in
value from 2,000 to 5,000 rubles, while other gubernias and other branches
of industry omitted them. We shall see in stances of this further
on. Finally, our latest factory statistical system has introduced a
completely different formula for defining the concept “factory.” It
has been recognised that “all industrial establishments” (of
those “under the jurisdiction” of the Factory
Inspectorate) are subject to registration “if they employ no
fewer than 15 workers, as are also those employing fewer than 15 workers,
if they have a steam-boiler, a steam-engine, or other mechanical
motive power andmachines or factory
installations.”[8]
We must examine this
definition in detail (the points we have stressed are particularly
unclear), but let us first say that this concept of “factory”
is something quite new in our factory statistics; until now no attempt has
been made to limit the concept “factory” to establishments
with a definite number of workers, with a steam-engine, etc. In general,
the strict limitation of the concept “factory” is undoubtedly
necessary, but the definition we have cited suffers, unfortunately, from
its extreme lack of precision, from its unclarity and diffusion. It
provides the following definitions of establishments subject to
registration as “factories” in the statistics: 1) The
establishment must come within the jurisdiction of the Factory
Inspectorate. This, apparently, excludes establishments belonging to the
state, etc., metallurgical plants and others. In the List,
however, there are many state and government factories (see Alphabetical
List, pp. 1-2), and we do not know whether they were registered in all
gubernias or whether the data pertaining to them were subject to checking
by the Factory Inspectorate, etc. It must be said, in general, that as
long as our factory statistics are not freed from the web of various
“departments” to which the different industrial establishments
belong, they cannot be satisfactory; the areas of departmental
jurisdiction frequently overlap and are subject to changes; even the
implementation of similar programmes by different departments will never
be identical. The rational organisation of statistics demands that
complete information on all industrial establishments be concentrated in
one purely statistical institution to ensure careful observation of
identical methods of gathering and analysing data. So long as this is not
done, the greatest caution must be exercised in dealing with factory
statistics that now include and now exclude (at different times and in
different gubernias) establishments belonging to “another
department.” Metallurgical plants, for instance, have long been excluded
from our factory statistics; but Orlov, nevertheless, included in
the last edition of his Directory quite a number of metallurgical
plants (almost all rail production, the Izhevsk and Votkinsk factories in
Vyatka Gubernia, and others) that are not included in the List,
although the latter records metallurgical plants in other gubernias that
were previously not included in “factory” statistics (e.g.,
the Siemens copper-smelting plant in Elisavetpol Gubernia, p. 330). In
Section VIII of the introduction to the List, iron-working,
iron-smelting, iron- and copper-founding and other establishments are
mentioned (p. iii), but no indication at all is given of the way in which
metallurgical plants are separated from those “subordinated”
to the Department of Commerce and Manufactures. 2) Only
industrial establishments are subject to registration. This
definition is not as clear as it seems to be at first glance; the
separation of artisan and agricultural establishments requires detailed
and clearly defined rules applicable to each branch of industry. Below we
shall see confusion in abundance arising out of the absence of these
rules. 3) The number of workers in an establishment must be no less than
15. It is not clear whether only workers actually employed in the
establishment are counted or whether those working outside are included;
it has not been explained how the former are to be distinguished from the
latter (this is also a difficult question), whether auxiliary workers
should be counted, etc. In the above-mentioned book Mr. Mikulin quotes
instances of the confusion arising out of this unclarity. The
List enumerates many establishments that employ only
outside workers. It stands to reason that an attempt to list all
establishments of this type (i.e., all shops giving out work, all people
in the so-called handicraft industries who give out work, etc.) can only
raise a smile under the present system of gathering information, while
fragmentary data for some gubernias and some branches of industry are of
no significance and merely add to the confusion. 4) All establishments
possessing a steam-boiler or a steam-engine are called “factories.”
This definition is the most accurate and most happily chosen, because the
employment of steam is really typical for the development of large-scale
machine industry. 5) Establishments possessing “other”
(non-steam) “mechanical motive power” are regarded as
factories. This definition is very inaccurate and exceedingly broad; by
this definition, establishments
employing water, horse, and wind power,
even treadmills, may be called factories. Since the registration of all
such establishments is not even feasible, there must be confusion,
examples of which we shall soon see. 6) Under the heading
“factories” are included establishments having “factory
installations.” This most indefinite and hazy definition negates the
significance of all definitions given previously and makes the data
chaotic and impossible to compare. This definition will inevitably be
understood differently in different gubernias, and what sort of definition
is it in reality? A factory is an establishment having factory
installations.... Such is the last word of our newest system of factory
statistics. No wonder these statistics are so unsatisfactory. We shall
give examples from all sections of the List in order to
show that in some gubernias and in some branches of industry the tiniest
establishments are registered, which introduces confusion into factory
statistics, since there can be no question of recording all such
establishments. Let us take Section I: “cotton processing.” On
pp. 10-11 we come across five “factories” in the villages of
Vladimir Gubernia which, for payment, dye yarn and linen belonging to
others (sic!). In place of the value of the output the sum paid
for dyeing is given as from 10 rubles (?) to 600 rubles, with the number
of workers from zero (whether this means that there is no information on
the number of workers or that there are no hired workers, is not
known) to three. There is no mechanical motive power. These are peasant
dye-houses, i.e., the most primitive artisan establishments that have been
registered by chance in one gubernia and, it goes without saying, omitted
in others. In Section II (wool processing), in the same Vladimir Gubernia,
we find hand “factories” that card wool belonging to others
for the payment of 12-48 rubles a year and em ploy 0 or I worker. There
is a band silk factory (Section III, No. 2517) in a village; it employs
three workers and has an out put valued at 660 rubles. Then more village
dye-houses in the same Vladimir Gubernia, employing 0-3 workers for hand
work and receiving 150-550 rubles for the treatment of Linen (Section IV,
treatment of flax, p. 141). There is a bast-mat “factory” in
Perm Gubernia, on a hand-work level, employing six workers (Section V),
with an output valued at 921 rubles (No. 3936). It goes without saying
that there
are more than a few such establishments in other gubernias (Kostroma, for
instance), but they were not counted as factories. There is a
printing-works (Section VI) with one worker and an output value of 300
rubles (No. 4167): in other gubernias only the big printing-works were
included, and in still others, none at all. There is a
“sawmill” with three workers sawing barrel staves for the
payment of 100 rubles (Section VII, No. 6274), and a metal-working hand
establishment employing three workers with an output valued at 575 rubles
(No. 8962). In Section IX (processing of mineral products) there are very
many of the tiniest establishments, brickworks especially, with, for
example, only one worker and an output valued at 48-50 rubles, and so
on. In Section X (processing of livestock products) there are petty
candle, sheep - skin processing, leather and other establishments
employing hand labour, 0-1-2 workers, with an output valued at a few
hundred rubles (pp. 489, 507, et al.). More than anywhere else there are
numerous establishments of a purely artisan type in Section XI (processing
of foodstuffs), in the oil-pressing and, especially, the flour-milling
branches. In the latter industry the strict division of
“factories” from petty establishments is most essential; but
so far this has not been done and utter chaos reigns in all our factory
statistical publications. An attempt to introduce order into the
statistics on the factory- type flour-milling establishments was made by
the first congress of gubernia statistical committee secretaries (in May
1870),[9]
but it was in vain, and up to the present day the compilers of our
factory statistics do not seem to be concerned about the utter
uselessness of the figures they print. The List, for example,
included among the factories windmills employing one worker and realising
from 0 to 52 rubies, etc. (pp. 587, 589, et passim); water-mills
with one wheel, employing one worker and earning 34-80 rubles,
etc. (p. 589, et passim); and so on. It goes without saying that
such “statistics” are simply ridiculous, because another and
even several other volumes could be filled with such mills without giving
a complete list. Even in the section dealing with the chemical industry
(XII) there are tiny establishments.such as village pitch works employing
from one to three workers, with an output valued at 15-300 rubles (p. 995,
et al.). Such methods can go so far as to produce “statistics”
similar to those published in the sixties in the well-known Military
Statistical Abstract that for European Russia listed 3,086 pitch and
tar “factories,” of which 1,450 were in Archangel Gubernia
(employing 4,202 workers, with a total output valued at 156,274 rubles,
i.e.,
an average of fewer than three workers and a little more than 100 rubles
per “factory”). Archangel Gubernia seems to have been deliberately
left out of this section of the List altogether, as though the
peasants there do not distil pitch and make tar! We must point out that
all the instances cited concern registered establishments that do not come
under the definitions given in the circular of June 7,1895. Their
registration, therefore, is purely fortuitous; they were included
in some gubernias (perhaps, even, in some
uyezds[10]
),
but in the majority
they were omitted. Such establishments were omitted in former statistics
(from 1885 onwards) as having an output valued at less than 1,000 rubles.

Mr.Karyshev did not properly understand this basic problem of factory
statistics; yet he did not hesitate to make “deductions” from
the figures he obtained by his calculations. The first of these deductions
is that the number of factories in Russia is decreasing (p. 4, et
al.). Mr. Karyshev arrived at this conclusion in a very simple way: he
took the number of factories for 1885 from the data of the Department of
Commerce and Manufactures (17,014) and deducted from it the number of
factories in European Russia given in the List (14,578). This
gives a reduction of 14.3%—the professor even calculates the
percentage and is not bothered by the fact that the 1885 data did not
include the excise-paying factories; he confines himself to the remark
that the addition of excise-paying establishments would give a greater
“reduction” in the number of factories. And the author
undertakes to discover in which part of Russia this “process of
diminution in the number of establishments” (p. 5) is evolving
“most rapidly.” In actual fact there is no process of
diminution, the number offactories in Russia is increasing and not decreasing, and the
figment of Mr. Karyshev’s imagination came from the learned professor’s
having compared data that are not at all
comparable.[11]
The incomparability is by no means due to the absence of data on
excise-paying factories for 1885. Mr. Karyshev could have taken figures
that included such factories (from Orlov’s cited Directory that
was compiled from the same Department of Commerce and Manufactures
lists), and in this way could have fixed the number of
“factories” in European Russia at 27,986 for 1879,
27,235 for 1884, 21,124 for 1890, and the
“reduction” by 1894-95 (14,578) would have been incomparably
greater. The only trouble is that all these figures are quite unsuitable
for comparison, because, first, there is no uniform conception of
“factory” in old and present-day factory statistical
publications, and, secondly, very small establishments are included in
the number of “factories” fortuitously and indiscriminately
(for certain gubernias, for certain years), and, with the means at the
disposal of our statistics, it would be ridiculous even to assume that
they could be registered in full. Had Mr. Karyshev taken the trouble to
study the definition of “factory” in the List, he
would have seen that in order to compare the number of factories in that
publication with the number of factories in others it would be
necessary to take only establishments employing 15 or more
workers, because it is only this type of establishment
that the List registered in toto and without any
limitations for all gubernias and all branches of industry. Since such
establishments are among the relatively large ones, their registration
in previous publications was also more satisfactory. Having thus assured
the uniformity of data to be compared, let us compute the number of
factories in European Russia employing
sixteen[12]
or
more workers, taking them from the Directory for 1879 and from
the List for 1894-95. We get the following instructive figures:

Therefore,the comparison of those figures which alone can be considered
relatively uniform, comparable, and complete shows that the number of
factories in Russia Is increasing, and at a fairly rapid rate: in
fifteen or sixteen years (from 1879 to 1894-95) it has increased from
4,500 to 6,400, i.e., by 40 per cent (in 1879 and 1890 print-shops were
not included in the number of factories). As far as the number of
establishments employing fewer than 16 workers is concerned, it would be
absurd to compare them for these years, since different
definitions of “factory” and different methods of excluding
small establishments were employed in all these publications. In 1879
no small establishments were excluded; on account of
this, the very smallest establishments in branches closely connected
with agriculture and peasant industries (flour milling, oil pressing,
brickmaking, leather, potteries, and others) were included, but they were
omitted in later publications. By 1890 some small establishments (those
with an output valued at less than 1,000 rubles) were omitted; this left
fewer small “factories.” And lastly, in 1894-95, the mass of
establishments employing fewer than 15 workers was omitted, which resulted
in the immediate reduction in the number of small “factories”
to about a half of the 1890 figure. The number of factories for 1879 and
1890 can be made comparable in another way—by selecting the
establishments
with an output valued at no less than 2,000 rubles. This is possible
because the totals from the Directory, as quoted above, refer to
all registered establishments, whereas the Directory entered in
its name index of factories only those with an output valued at
no less than 2,000 rubles. The number of establishments of this type may
be considered approximately comparable (although there can never be a
complete list of these establishments as long as our statistics are in
their present state), with the exception, however, of the flour- milling
industry. Registration in this branch is of a completely fortuitous
character in different gubernias and for different years both in the
Directory and in the Collection of the Department of
Commerce and Manufactures. In some gubernias only steam-mills are counted
as “factories,” in others big water-mills are added, in the third
case hundreds of wind mills, and in the fourth even horse-mills and
treadmills are included, etc. Limitation on the basis of the value of
output does not clear up the chaos in statistics on factory-type mills,
because, instead of that value the quantity of flour milled is taken, and
this, even in very small mills, frequently amounts to more than 2,000
poods a year. The number of mills included in factory statistics,
therefore, makes unbelievable leaps from year to year on account of the
lack of uniformity in registration methods. The Collection, for
example, listed 5,073, 5,605 and 5,201 mills in European Russia for the
years 1889, 1890, and 1891 respectively. In Voronezh Gubernia the number
of mills, 87 in 1889, suddenly increased to 285 in 1890 and 483 in 1892 as
a result of the accidental inclusion of windmills. In the Don region the
number of mills increased from 59 in 1887 to 545 in 1888 and 976 in 1890,
then dropping to 685 in 1892 (at times windmills were included, while at
others they were not), etc., etc. The employment of such data is clearly
impermissible. We, therefore, take only steam-mills and add to them
establishments in other branches of industry with an output value of no
less than 2,000 rubles, and the number of factories we get for European
Russia in 1879 is about 11,500 and in 1890 about
15,500.[14]
From this,
again, it follows that there is an increasein the number of factories and not the decrease invented by
Mr. Karyshev. Mr. Karyshev’s theory of the “process of diminution in
the number of establishments” in the factory industry of Russia is a
pure fable, based on a worse than in sufficient acquaintance with the
material he undertook to analyse. Mr. Karyshev, as long ago as 1889
(Yuridichesky Vestnik, No. 9), spoke of the number of factories
in Russia, comparing absolutely unsuitable figures taken from the loyal
reports of the governors and published in the Returns for Russia for
1884-86 (St. Petersburg, 1887, Table XXXIX) with the strange figures
of the Military Statistical Abstract (Issue IV. St. Petersburg,
1871), which included among the “factories” thousands of tiny
artisan and handicraft establishments, thousands of tobacco plantations
(sic! see pp. 345 and 414 of the Military Statistical
Abstract on tobacco “factories” in Bessarabia Gubernia),
thousands of rural flour- mills and oil-presses, etc., etc. Small wonder
that in this way the Military Statistical Abstract recorded over
70,000 “factories” in European Russia in 1866. The wonder is
that a man was found who was so inattentive and uncritical with regard to
every printed figure as to take it as a basis for his
calculations.[15]

Herea slight diversion is necessary. From his theory of the diminution of
the number of factories Mr. Karyshev deduces the existence of a process of
the concentration of industry. It goes without saying that, in rejecting
his theory, we do not by any means reject the conclusion, since it is only
Mr. Karyshev’s way of arriving at it that is wrong. To demonstrate this
process,we must isolate the biggest establishments. Let us take, for
example, establishments employing 100 or more workers. Comparing the
number of such establishments, the number of workers they employ, and the
total value of their output with data on all establishments,we get this
table:

Itcan be seen from this table that the number of very large
establishments is increasing, as well as the number of workers employed
and the value of the output, which constitute an ever greater proportion
of the total number of workers and the total value of the output of
officially registered “factories.” The objection may be raised that
if a concentration of industry is taking place, it means that big
establishments are squeezing out the smaller, whose number and,
consequently, the total number of establishments, is decreasing. But,
firstly, this last deduction is not made in respect of
“factories” but refers to all industrial
establishments, and of these we have no right to speak because we
have no statistics on industrial establishments that are in the least
reliable and complete. Secondly, and from a purely theoretical standpoint,
it cannot be said a priori that the number of industrial
establishments in a developing capitalist society must inevitably and
always diminish, since, simultaneous with the process of the concentration
of industry, there is the process of the population’s withdrawal from
farming, the process of growth in the number of small industrial
establishments in the backward parts of the country as a result of the
break-up of the semi-natural peasant economy,
etc.[17]

Letus return to Mr. Karyshev. He pays almost the greatest attention of
all to those data that are the least reliable (i.e., the data on the
number of “factories”). He divides up the gubernias into groups
according to the number of “factories,” he designs a cartogram on
which these groups are plotted, he compiles a special table of gubernias
having the greatest number of “factories” in each branch of
industry (pp. 16-17); he presents a mass of calculations in
which the number of factories in each gubernia is shown as a percentage of
the total (pp. 12-15). In doing this Mr. Karyshev overlooked a mere
bagatelle: he forgot to ask himself whether the numbers of factories
in different gubernias are comparable. This is a question that must
be answered in the negative and, consequently, the greater part of
Mr. Karyshev’s calculations,
comparisons, and arguments must be relegated to the sphere of innocent
statistical exercises. If the professor had acquaint ed himself with the
definition of “factory” given in the circular of June 7, 1895,
he would easily have concluded that such a vague definition
cannot be applied uniformly in different gubernias, and a more
attentive study of the List itself could have led him to the same
conclusion. Let us cite some examples. Mr. Karyshev selects Voronezh,
Vyatka, and Vladimir gubernias (p. 12) for the number of establishments in
Section XI (processing of food products; this group contains the greatest
number of factories). But the abundance of “factories” in
these gubernias is to be explained primarily by the purely
fortuitous registration, specifically in these gubernias, of small
establishments such as were not included in other gubernias. In Voronezh
Gubernia, for instance, there are many “factories” simply
because small flour-mills were included (of 124 mills only 27 are
steam-mills; many of them are water-mills with 1-2-3 wheels; such mills
were not included in other gubernias, and, indeed, they could not be
listed in full), as well as small oil-presses (mostly horse-driven), which
were not included in other gubernias. In Vyatka Gubernia only 3 out of 116
mills are steam-driven, in Vladimir Gubernia a dozen windmills and 168
oil-presses were included, of which the majority were wind- or
horse-driven or were worked by hand. The fact that there were fewer
establishments in other gubernias, does not, of course, mean that these
gubernias were devoid of windmills, small water-mills, etc. They were
simply not included. In a large number of gubernias steam- mills were
included almost exclusively (Bessarabia, Ekaterinoslav, Taurida, Kherson,
et al.), and the flour-milling industry accounted for 2,308
“factories” out of 6,233 in European Russia, according to
Section XI. It was absurd to speak of the distribution of factories by
gubernias without investigating the dissimilarity of the
data. Let us take Section IX, the processing of minerals. In Vladimir
Gubernia, for example, there are 96 brickworks and in the Don region, 31,
i.e., less than a third of the number. The Directory (for 1890)
showed the opposite: 16 in Vladimir and 61 in the Don region. It now turns
out that, according to the List, out of the 96 brickworks in
Vladimir Gubernia only 5 employ 16 or more workers, while the analogous
figures for the Don region
are 26 out of 31. The obvious explanation of this is that in the
Don region small brickworks were not so generously classified as
“factories” as in Vladimir Gubernia, and that is all (the
small brickworks in Vladimir Gubernia are all run on hand
labour). Mr. Karyshev does not see any of this (p. 14). In respect of
Section X (processing of livestock products) Mr. Karyshev says that the
number of establishments is small in almost all gubernias but that
“an outstanding exception is Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia with its 252
factories” (p. 14). This is primarily due to the fact that very many
small hand establishments (sometimes horse- or wind-driven) were included
in this gubernia and not in the others. Thus, for Mogilev Gubernia the
List includes only two factories in this section; each of them
employs more than 15 workers. Dozens of small factories processing
livestock products could have been listed in Mogilev Gubernia, in the same
way as they were included in the Directory for 1890, which showed
99 factories processing livestock products. The question then arises: What
sense is there in Mr. Karyshev’s calculations of the distribution by
percentages of “factories” so differently understood?

Inorder to show more clearly the different conceptions of the term
“factory” in different gubernias, we shall take two neighbouring
gubernias: Vladimir and Kostroma. According to the List, there are 993
“factories” in the former and 165 in the latter. In all branches of
industry (sections) in the former there are tiny establishments that swamp the
large ones by their great number (only 324 establishments employ 16 or more
workers). In the latter there are very few small establishments (112 factories
out of 165 employ 16 or more workers), although everybody realises that more
than a few windmills, oil-presses, small starch, brick, and pitch works, etc.,
etc., could be counted in this
gubernia.[18]

Mr.Karyshev’s light-minded attitude towards the authenticity of the
figures he uses reaches its peak when he compares the number of
“factories” per gubernia for 1894-95 (according to
the List) with that for 1885 (according to the
Collection). There is a serious dissertation on the increased
number of factories in Vyatka Gubernia, on the “considerably
decreased” number in Perm Gubernia, and on the substantially
increased number in Vladimir Gubernia, and so on (pp. 6-7). “In this
we may see,” concludes our author profoundly, “that the
above-mentioned process of diminution in the number of factories affects
places with a more developed and older industry less than those where
industry is younger” (p. 7). Such a deduction sounds very
“scientific”; the greater the pity that it is merely
nonsensical. The figures used by Mr. Karyshev are quite fortuitous. For
example, according to the Collection, for 1885-90 the number of
“factories” in Perm Gubernia was 1, 001, 895, 951, 846, 917,
and 1,002 respectively, following which, in 1891, the figure suddenly
dropped to 585. One of the reasons for these leaps was the inclusion of
469 mills as “factories” in 1890 and 229 in 1891. If the
List gives only 362 factories for that gubernia, it must be borne in
mind that it now includes only 66 mills as “factories.” If the number of
“factories” has increased in Vladimir Gubernia, the List’s
registration of small establishments in that gubernia must be remembered. In
Vyatka Gubernia, the Collection recorded 1-2-2-30-28-25 mills from
1887 to 1892 and the List, 116. In short, the comparison undertaken by
Mr. Karyshev demonstrates over and over again that he is quite incapable of
analysing figures from different sources.

Ingiving the numbers of factories in different sections (groups of industrial
branches) and in computing their ratio to the total number, Mr. Karyshev once
again fails to notice that there is no uniformity in the number of small
establishments included in the various sections (there are, for example, fewer
in the textile and metallurgical industries than elsewhere, about one-third of
the total number for European Russia, whereas in the industries processing
livestock and food products they constitute about two-thirds of the total
number). It stands to reason that in this way he is comparing non-comparable
magnitudes, with the result that his percent ages (p. 8) are devoid of all
meaning. In short, on the entire
question of the number of “factories” and their distribution
Mr. Karyshev has displayed a complete lack of understanding of the nature
of the data he has employed and their degree of reliability.

Aswe go over from the number of factories to the number of workers, we
must say, in the first place, that the figures for the total number of
workers recorded in our factory statistics are much more reliable than
those given for the factories. Of course, there is no little confusion
here, too, and no lack of omissions and reductions of the actual
number. But in this respect we do not find such great divergence in the
type of data used, and the excessive variations in the number of small
establishments, which are at times included in the number of factories and
at others not, have very little effect on the total number of workers, for
the simple reason that. even a very large percentage of the smallest
establishments gives a very small percentage of the total number of
workers. We have seen above that for the year 1894-95, 74 per cent of the
workers were concentrated in 1,468 factories (10 per cent of the total
number). The number of small factories (employing fewer than 16 workers)
was 7,919 out of 14,578, i.e., more than a half, and the number of workers
in them was (even allowing an average of 8 workers per establishment)
something like 7 per cent of the total. This gives rise to the following
phenomenon: while there is a tremendous difference in the number of
factories in 1890 (in the Directory) and in 1894-95, the
difference in the number of workers is insignificant: in 1890 the figure
was 875,764 workers for fifty gubernias of European Russia, and in 1894-95
it was 885,555 (counting only workers employed inside the
establishments). If we deduct from the first figure the number of workers
employed in the rail manufacturing (24,445) and salt-refining (3,704)
industries, not included in the List, and from the second figure
the number of workers in print-shops (16,521), not included in the
Directory, we get 847,615 workers for 1890 and 869,034 workers
for 1894-95, i.e., 2.5 per cent more. It goes without saying that this
percentage cannot express the actual increase, since many small
establishments were not included in 1894-95, but, in general, the
closeness of these figures shows the relative suitability of the over-all
data on the total number of workers and their
relative reliability. Mr. Karyshev, from whom we have taken the total
number of workers, does not make an accurate analysis of precisely which
branches of industry were included in 1894-95 as compared with former
publications, nor does he point out that the List omits many
establishments that were formerly included in the number of factories. For
his comparison with former statistics he takes the same absurd data of the
Military Statistical Abstract and repeats the same nonsense about
the alleged reduction in the number of workers relative to the population
which has already been refuted by Mr. Tugan-Baranovsky (see above). Since
the data on the number of workers are more authentic, they are deserving
of a more thorough analysis than the data on the number of factories, but
Mr. Karyshev has done just the opposite. He does not even group factories
together according to the number of workers employed, which is what he
should have done in the first place, in view of the fact that the
List regards the number of workers as an important distinguishing
feature of the factory. It can be seen from the data cited above that the
concentration of workers is very great.

Insteadof grouping factories according to the number of workers employed
in them, Mr. Karyshev undertook a much simpler calculation, aimed at
determining the average number of workers per factory. Since the data on
the number of factories are, as we have seen, particularly unreliable,
fortuitous, and dissimilar, the calculations are full of
errors. Mr. Karyshev compares the average number of workers per factory in
1886 with the figure for 1894-95 and from this deduces that “the
average type of factory is growing larger” (pp. 23 and 32-33), not
realising that in 1894-95 only the larger establishments were listed, so
that the comparison is incorrect. There is a very strange comparison of
the number of workers per factory in the different gubernias (p. 26);
Mr. Karyshev obtains the result, for instance, that “Kostroma
Gubernia turns out to have a bigger average type of industry than all
other gubernias”—242 workers per factory as compared with, for
example, 125 in Vladimir Gubernia. It does not enter the learned
professor’s head that this is due merely to different methods of
registration, as we have explained above. Having allowed the difference
between the number of large and small establishments in different
gubernias to pass
unnoticed, Mr. Karyshev invented a very simple way of evading the
difficulties encountered in this question. Precisely put, he multiplied
the average number of workers per factory for the whole of European
Russia (and then for Poland and the Caucasus) by the number of
factories in each gubernia and indicated the groups he thus obtained on a
special cartogram (No. 3). This, indeed, is really so simple! Why group
factories according to the number of workers they employ, why examine the
relative number of large and small establishments in different gubernias,
when we can so easily artificially level out the
“average” size of the factories in various gubernias according
to one standard? Why try to find out whether there are many or few small
and petty establishments included in the number of factories in Vladimir
or Kostroma Gubernia, when we can “simply” take the average
number of workers per factory throughout European Russia and
multiply it by the number of factories in each gubernia? What
matters it if such a method equates hundreds of fortuitously registered
windmills and oil-presses with big factories? The reader, of course, will
not notice it, and who knows—he may even believe the
“statistics” invented by Professor Karyshev!

Inaddition to workers employed in the establishment, the List
has a special category of workers “outside the establishment.” This
includes not only those working at home to the orders of the factory
(Karyshev, p. 20), but also auxiliary workers, and so on. The number of
these workers given in the List (66,460 in the Empire) must not
be regarded as “an indication of how far advanced in Russia is the
development of the so-called outside department of the factory”
(Karyshev, p. 20), since there can be no question of anything like a
complete registration of such workers under the present system of factory
statistics. Mr. Karyshev says very thoughtlessly: “66,500 for the
whole of Russia with her millions of handicraftsmen and artisans is but a
few” (ibid.).Before writing this he had to forget that, if
not the greater part, at least a very large part of these “millions
of handicraftsmen,” as is confirmed by all sources, work for jobbers,
i.e., are the selfsame “outside workers.” One has only to glance at
those pages of the List devoted to districts known for their
handicraft industries to be convinced of the thoroughly fortuitous and
fragmentary nature of the registration of
“outside workers.” Section II (wool processing) of the List,
for example, for Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia counts only 28 outside workers
in the town of Arzamas and in the suburban Viyezdnaya Sloboda (p. 89),
whereas we know from the Transactions of the Commission of Inquiry
into Handicraft Industry in Russia (Issues V and Vi) that many
hundreds (up to a thousand) “handicraftsmen” work there for
masters. The List does not record any outside workers at all in
Semyonov Uyezd, whereas we know from the
Zemstvo[22]
statistics
that over 3,000 “handicraftsmen” work there for masters in the
felt boot and insole branches. The List records only one
“factory” employing 17 outside workers in the accordion
industry of Tula Gubernia (p. 395), whereas the cited Transactions of
the Commission, etc., as early as 1882, listed between 2,000 and
3,000 handicraftsmen working for accordion factory owners (Issue IX). It
is, therefore, obvious that to regard the figure of 66,500 outside workers
as being in any way authentic and to discuss their distribution by
gubernias and branches of industry, as Mr. Karyshev does, and even to
compile a cartogram, is simply ridiculous. The real significance of these
figures lies not at all in the determination of the extent to which
capitalist work is done in the home (which is determinable only from a
complete industrial census that includes all shops and other
establishments, as well as individuals giving out work to be done at
home), but in the separation of the workers in the establishments,
i.e. ,factory workers in the strict sense from outside workers. Hitherto
these two types of workers have often been confounded; frequent instances
of such confusion are to be found even in the Directory for
1890. The List is now making the first attempt to put an end to
this state of affairs.

TheList’s figures relating to the annual output of the factories have
been analysed by Mr. Karyshev most satisfactorily of all, mainly because that
author at last introduced the grouping of factories by the magnitude of their
output and not by the usual “averages.” It is true that the author still
cannot rid himself of these “averages” (the magnitude of output per
factory) and even compares the averages for 1894-95 with those for 1885, a
method that, as we have repeatedly said, is absolutely incorrect. We would note
that the total figures for the annual output of factories are much more
authentic than the total figures for the number of factories, for the
reason, already mentioned, of the minor role of the small establishments
According to the List, there are, for example, only 245 factories
in European Russia with an out put valued at more than one million rubles,
i.e., only 1.9 per cent, but they account for 45.6 per cent of the total
annual output of all factories in European Russia (Karyshev, p. 38), while
factories with an output valued at less than 5,000 rubles constitute 30.8
per cent of the total number, but account for only 0.6 per cent of the
total output, i.e., a most insignificant fraction. We must here note that
in these calculations Mr. Karyshev ignores the difference between the
value of the total output (=value of the product) and payment for the
processing of raw material. This very important distinction is made for
the first time in our factory statistics by the
List.[19]
It goes
without saying that these two magnitudes are absolutely incomparable with
each other and that they should have been separated. Mr. Karyshev does not
do this, and it is to be supposed that the low percentage of annual output
of the small establishments is partly due to the inclusion of
establishments that showed only the cost of processing the product and not
its value. Below we shall give an example of the error into which
Mr. Karyshev falls through ignoring this circumstance. The fact that the
List differentiates between payment for processing and the value
of the product and that it does not include the sum of the excise in the
price of production makes it impossible to compare these figures with
those of previous publications. According to the List, the output
of all the factories of European Russia amounts to 1,345 million rubles,
while according to the Directory for 1890 it amounted to 1,501
million. But if we subtract the sum of the excise from the second figure
(250 million rubles in the distilling industry alone), then the first
figure will be considerably greater.

Inthe Directory (2nd and 3rd editions) factories were
distributed in groups according to the amount of annual out put (without
any indication of the share of each group in the total output), but this
distribution cannot be compared with the data in the List because
of the differences in registration methods mentioned above and in the
determining of the magnitude of annual output.

Wehave yet another fallacious argument of Mr. Karyshev to examine. Here,
too, in quoting data on the total annual output of factories in each
gubernia, he could not refrain from making comparisons with the data for
the years 1885 to 1891, i.e., with the data of the Collection.
Those data contain no information on productions subject to excise, and
for
that reason Mr. Karyshev looks only for gubernias in which the total
output for 1894-95 is less than in previous years. Such gubernias are
to be found to the number of eight (pp. 39-40), and apropos of this
Mr. Karyshev argues about “the retrograde movement in industry” in
the “less industrial” gubernias and says that this “may serve
as an indication of the difficult position of the small establishments in their
competition with big establishments,” and so on. All these arguments. would
probably be very profound if—if they were not all completely
fallacious. And here, too, Mr. Karyshev did not notice that he was comparing
absolutely non- comparable and dissimilar data. Let us demonstrate this
incomparability by data on each of the gubernias indicated by Mr.
Karyshev.[20]
In
Perm Gubernia the total output in 1890 was 20.3 million rubles
(Directory), while in 1894-95 it was 13.1 million rubles; this includes
the flour-milling industry,
12.7 million (at 469 mills!) in 1890, and 4.9 million (at 66 mills) in
1894-95. The seeming “reduction,” therefore, is simply a matter of the
fortuitous registration of different numbers of mills. The number of
steam-mills, for example, increased from 4 in 1890 and 1891 to 6 in
1894-95. The “reduction” of
output in Simbirsk Gubernia is to be explained in the same way (1890: 230
mills with an output of 4.8 million rubles; 1894-95: 27 mills with an
output of 1.7 million rubles. Steam- mills, 10 and 13 respectively). In
Vyatka Gubernia the total output was 8.4 million rubles in 1890 and 6.7
million in 1894- 95, a reduction of 1.7 million rubles. Here, in 1890, two
metallurgical works, the Votkinsk and the Izhevsk, were included, with a
combined output valued at precisely 1.7 million rubles; in 1894-95 they
were not included because they were “subordinated” to the
Department of Mines and Metallurgy. Astrakhan Gubernia: 2.5 million rubles
in 1890 and 2.1 mil lion in 1894-95. But in 1890 the salt-refining
industry (346,000 rubles) was included, while in 1894-95 it was not,
because it belongs to the “mining” industries. Pskov Gubernia:
2.7 million rubles in 1890 and 2.3 million in 1894-95; but 45
flax-scutching establishments with a total output of 1.2 million rubles
were counted in 1890, and in 1894-95 only four flax-spinning
establishments with an output valued at 248,000 rubles. It stands to
reason that the flax-scutching establishments in Pskov Gubernia have not
disappeared but were simply not included in the list (perhaps because the
majority of them are hand-worked and employ less than 15 workers). In
Bessarabia Gubernia the output of the flour-mills was registered in
different ways, although a similar number of mills was recorded both in
1890 and in 1894-95 (97 in each case); in 1890 the quantity of flour
milled was computed—4.3 million poods valued at 4.3 million rubles,
while in 1894-95 the majority of the mills recorded only payment for
milling, so that their total output (1.8 million rubles) cannot be
compared with the figure for 1890. The following instances will illustrate
the difference. Levenson’s two mills recorded an output of 335,000 rubles
in 1890 (Directory, p. 424), and in 1894-95 recorded only 69,000
rubles payment for milling (List, No. 14231-2). Schwartzberg’s
mill, on the contrary, showed the value of the product in 1890 as 125,000
rubles (Directory, p. 425), and in 1894-95 as 175,000 rubles
(List, No. 14214);out of the total sum for the
flour-milling industry in 1894-95, 1,400,000 rubles are accounted for by
the value of the product and 0.4 million rubles as payment for milling.The
same is true of Vitebsk Gubernia: in 1890—241 mills with a total
output figure of 3.6 million rubles, and in 1894-95—82
mills with a total output figure of 120,000 rubles, the majority of the
mills showing only payment for milling (the number of steam-mills in 1890
was 37, in 1891, 51, and in 1894-95, 64), so that more than a
half of this sum of 120,000 rubles does not represent the value of
the product but payment for milling. And, finally, in the last gubernia,
Archangel, the “retrograde movement in industry” discovered by
Mr. Karyshev is explained simply by a strange error in his calculations:
in actual fact the total value of the output of the Archangel factories,
according to the List, is not the 1.3 million rubles twice quoted by
Mr. Karyshev (pp. 40 and 39, as compared with 3.2 million rubles in 1885-91),
but 6.9 million rubles, of which 6.5 million rubles was accounted for
by 18 sawmills (List, p. 247).

Summarisingwhat has been said above, we come to the conclusion that
Mr. Karyshev’s approach to the material he was analysing was astonishingly
inattentive and devoid of criticism, so that he committed a whole series
of the crudest errors. With regard to the calculations based on the
List figures that he made together with his colleagues, it must
be said that they lose much in statistical value from the fact that
Mr. Karyshev did not publish full totals, i.e., total numbers of
factories, workers, value of output for all gubernias and all branches of
industry (although he apparently made these calculations, which, had he
published them in full, would, on the one hand, have made verification
possible and, on the other, have proved of great benefit to those who use
the List). The purely statistical analysis of the material,
therefore, proved extremely fragmentary, incomplete,and unsystematic, and
Mr. Karyshev’s deductions, made in too great a hurry, serve, for the most
part, as an example of how not to work with figures.

Returningto the question raised above on the present state of our factory
statistics, we must say, first of all, that if “complete and reliable
production figures” are an “urgent necessity” (as the
introduction to the List says, with which one cannot but agree), then,
to obtain them, a correctly organised industrial census is essential, one that
will register each and every industrial establishment, enterprise, and kind of
work, and that will be taken regularly at definite intervals of time. If the
data on occupations in the first
census[23]
of the population, taken on January 28, 1897, prove
satisfactory and if they are analysed in detail, they will greatly
facilitate the taking of an industrial census. As long as there are no
such censuses it can only be a question of registering some of the big
industrial establishments, It must be conceded that the present system of
collecting and processing statistical information on such big
establishments (“factories and workers” in the prevailing
terminology) is unsatisfactory in the highest degree. Its first
shortcoming is the division of factory statistics among various
“departments” and the absence of a special, purely statistical
institution that centralises the collecting, checking, and classifying of
all information on all types of factories. When you analyse the data of
our present-day factory statistics you find yourself on territory that is
intersected in all directions by the boundaries of various
“departments” (which employ special ways and means of
registration, and so on). It sometimes happens that these boundaries pass
through a certain factory, so that one section of a factory (the iron
foundry, for example) comes under the Department of Mines and Metallurgy,
while another section (the manufacture of ironware, for example) comes
under the Department of Commerce and Manufactures, It can be understood
how this makes the use of the data difficult and into what errors those
investigators risk falling (and fall) who do not pay sufficient attention
to this complicated question. With regard to the checking of the
information, it must be said in particular that the Factory Inspectorate
will, naturally, never be in a position to check the extent to which all
information supplied by all factory owners corresponds to reality. Under a
system of the present-day type (i.e., under which the information is not
gathered by means of a census conducted by a special staff of agents but
by means of questionnaires circulated among factory owners), the chief
attention should be paid to ensuring that the central statistical
institution have direct contact with all factory owners,
systematically control the uniformity of the returns, and see to
their completeness and to the dispatch of questionnaires to all
industrial centres of any importance—that it thus prevent the
fortuitous inclusion of dissimilar data, or different applications and
interpretations of the programme. The second basic shortcoming of
present-day statistics
lies in the fact that the programme for the gathering of information has
not been elaborated. If this programme is prepared in offices and is not
submitted to the criticism of specialists and (what is particularly
important) to an all- round discussion in the press, the information
never can be in any way complete and uniform. We have seen, for
example, how unsatisfactorily even the basic programmatic question—
what is a “factory”?—is being solved. Since there is no industrial census, and the system employed is that of gathering information
from the industrialists themselves (through the police, the Factory
Inspectorate, etc.), the concept “factory” should most
certainly be defined with complete accuracy and limited to big
establishments of such size as to warrant our expectation that they will
be registered everywhere and in their entirety without omissions.
It appears that the fundamental elements of the definition of a
“factory establishment” as at present accepted have been quite
well chosen: 1) the number of workers employed in the
establishment to be no fewer than 15 (the question of separating
auxiliary workers from factory workers in the true sense of the word, of
determining the average number of workers for the year, etc., to be
elaborated); and 2) the presence of a steam-engine (even when the number
of workers is smaller). Although extreme caution should be exercised in
extending this definition, it is an unfortunate fact that to these
distinguishing characteristics have been added other, quite indeterminate
ones. If, for instance, the bigger establishments employing water power
must not be omitted, it should be shown with absolute accuracy what
establishments of this type are subject to registration (using motive
power of not less than so many units, or employing not less than a certain
number of workers, and so on). If it is considered essential to include
smaller establishments in some branches, these branches must be listed
very precisely and other definite features of the concept “factory
establishments” must be given. Those branches in which
“factory” establishments merge with “handicraft”
or “agricultural” establishments (felt, brick, leather, flour
milling, oil pressing, and many others) should be given special
attention. We believe that the two characteristics we have given of the
concept “factory “should in no case be extended, because even
such relatively big
establishments can scarcely be registered without omissions under the
existing system of gathering information. A reform of the system may be
expressed either in partial and insignificant changes or in the
introduction of full industrial censuses. As far as the extent of the
information is concerned, i.e., the number of questions asked the
industrialists, here, too, a radical distinction has to be ’made between
an industrial census and statistics of the present-day type. It is only
possible and necessary to strive for complete information in the first
case (questions on the history of the establishment, its relations to
neighbouring establishments and the neighbourhood population, the
commercial side of affairs, raw and auxiliary materials, quantity and type
of the product, wages, the length of the working day, shifts, night- work
and overtime, and so on and so forth). In the second case great caution
must be exercised: it is better to obtain relatively little reliable,
complete, and uniform information than a lot of fragmentary, doubtful
information that cannot be used for comparisons. The only addition
undoubtedly necessary is that of questions on machinery in use and on the
amount of output.

Insaying that our factory statistics are unsatisfactory in the highest
degree, we do not by any means wish to imply that their data are not
deserving of attention and analysis. Quite the contrary. We have examined
in detail the short comings of the existing system in order to stress the
necessity for a particularly thorough analysis of the data. The chief and
basic purpose of this analysis should be the separation of the wheat from
the chaff, the separation of the relatively useful material from the
useless. As we have seen, the chief mistake made by Mr. Karyshev (and many
others) consists precisely in the failure to make such a separation. The
figures on “factories” are the least reliable, and under no
circumstances can they be used without a thorough preliminary analysis
(the separate listing of the bigger establishments, etc.). The number of
workers and the output values are much more reliable in the grand totals
(it is, however, still necessary to make a strict analysis of which
productions were included and in which way, how the output value was
computed, etc.). If the more detailed totals are taken, it is possible
that the data will prove unsuited for comparison and their use conducive
to error. The fables of the reduction of the number of factories in Russia
and of the number of factory workers (relative to the
population)—fables that have been so zealously disseminated by the
Narodniks[24]—can
only be explained as due to the ignoring
of all these circumstances.

Asfar as the analysis of the material itself is concerned, it must
undoubtedly be based on information on each separate factory, i.e.,
card-index information. The cards must, first and foremost, be grouped by
territorial units. The gubernia is too big a unit. The question of the
distribution of industry is so important that the classification must be
for individual cities, suburbs, villages, and groups of villages that form
industrial centres or districts. Further, grouping by branches of industry
is essential. In this respect our latest factory statistical system has,
in our opinion, introduced an undesirable change, causing a radical
rupture with the old subdivision into branches of industry that has
predominated right from the sixties (and earlier). The List made
a new grouping of industries in twelve sections: if the data are taken by
sections only, we get an excessively broad framework embracing branches of
production of the most diverse character and throwing them together (felt
cloth and rough felt, saw mills and furniture manufacture, notepaper and
printing, iron-founding and jewellery, bricks and porcelain, leather and
wax, oil-pressing and sugar-refining, beer-brewing and tobacco, etc.). If
these sections are subdivided in detail into separate branches we get
groups that are far too detailed (see Mikulin, op. cit.), over three
hundred of them! The old system that had ten sections and about a
hundred branches of production (91 in the Directory for 1890)
seems to us to have been much happier. Furthermore, it is essential to
group. the factories according to the number of workers, the type of
motive power, as well as according to the amount of output.
Such a grouping is particularly necessary from the purely theoretical
standpoint for the study of the condition and development of industry and
for the separation of relatively useful from useless data in the material
at hand. The absence of such a grouping (necessary within the territorial
groups and the groups of branches of production) is the most significant
shortcoming of our present publications on factory statistics, which allow
only “average figures” to be determined,
quite often absolutely false and leading to serious errors. Lastly,
grouping under all these headings should not be limited to a determination
of the number of establishments in each group (or sub-group) but must be
accompanied by a calculation of the number of workers and aggregate output
in each group, in establishments employing both machine and hand labour,
etc. In other words, combined tables are necessary as well as
group tables.

Itwould be a mistake to think that such an analysis involves an
inordinate amount of labour.The Zemstvo statistical bureaus with their
modest budgets and small staffs carry out much more complicated work for
each uyezd; they analyse 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000 separate cards (and the
number of relatively big, “factory” establishments throughout
the whole of Russia would probably not be more than 15,000- 16,000);
moreover, the volume of information on each card is incomparably greater:
there are several hundred columns in the Zemstvo statistical abstracts,
whereas in the List there are less than twenty. Notwithstanding
this, the best Zemstvo statistical abstracts not only provide group tables
under various headings, but also combined tables, i.e., those showing a
combination of various features.

Suchan analysis of the data would, firstly, provide the requisite
material for economic science. Secondly, it would fully decide the
question of separating relatively useful from useless data. Such an
analysis would immediately disclose the fortuitous character of data on
some branches of industry, some gubernias, some points of the programme,
etc. An opportunity would be provided to extract relatively full,
reliable, and uniform material. Valuable indications would be obtained of
the way in which these qualities can be assured in the future.

Notes

[1]
Ministry of Finance. Department of Commerce and Manufactures. The Factory
Industry of Russia. List of Factories and Works, St. Petersburg,
1897, pp. 63-j–vi-j-1047.
—Lenin

[3]Gubernia, uyezd, volost—Russian administrative-territorial
units. The largest of these was the gubernia, which had its subdivisions in
uyezds, which in turn were subdivided into volosts. This system of districting
continued under the Soviet power until the introduction of the new system of
administrative-territorial division of the country in
1929-30.—Ed.

[4]
Contrary to the opinion
of the reviewer in Russkiye
Vedomosti[25]
(1898,
No. 144), who, apparently, was as little capable of a critical attitude to
Mr. Karyshev’s conclusions as was Mr. Karyshev of a critical attitude to
the List’s figures.
—Lenin

[5]Ministry of Finance Yearbook. First Issue. St. Petersburg, 1869.
—Lenin

[6]Statistical Chronicle of the Russian Empire. Series II, Issue
6. St. Petersburg, 1872. Material for the factory statistics of European
Russia, elaborated under the editorship of I. Bok.
—Lenin

[7]Statistical Atlas of Main Branches of Factory Industry of European
Russia, with List of Factories and Works. Three issues. St. Petersburg,
1869, 1870, and 1873.
—Lenin

[8]
Circular of June 7,1895, in Kobelyatsky (handbook for Members of the
Factory Inspectorate etc., 4th edition. St. Petersburg, 1897, p. 35. Our
italics). This circular is not reprinted in the introduction to the
List, and Mr. Karyshev, in analysing the List material, did
not go to the trouble of discovering what the List meant by
“factories”!!
—Lenin

[9]
According to the draft rules drawn up by the congress on the gathering
of industrial data, all mills equipped with less than 10 pairs of
millstones, but not roller mills, were excluded from the list of
factories. Statistical Chronicle, Series II, Issue 6,
Introduction, p. xiii.
—Lenin

[11]
In 1889 Mr. Karyshev took data for 1885 (Yuridichesky
Vestnik,[26]
No. 9) drawn from the most loyal
reports of the governors, data that included the very smallest
flour-mills, oil-presses, brickyards, potteries, leather, sheepskin, and
other handicraft establishments, and fixed the number of
“factories” in European Russia at 62,8011 We are
amazed that he did not calculate the percentage of “reduction”
in the number of factories today in relation to this figure.
—Lenin

[12]
We are taking 16 and not 15 workers, partly
because the computation of factories with 16 and more workers has already been
made
in the Directory for 1890 (3rd edition, p. x), and partly because the
explanations of the Ministry of Finance sometimes adopt this standard (see
Kobelyatsky, loc. cit., p. 14).
—Lenin

[13]
Some gaps in the information have been filled in
approximately:
see Directory, p. 695.
—Lenin

[14]
It is impossible to
obtain the required figure from the data in the List, first,
because it omits a mass of establishments with an output valued at 2,000
rubles and more owing to their employing fewer than 15 workers. Secondly,
because the List counted the total value of the output without
excise (in which it differed from former statistics). Thirdly, because the
List, in some cases, registered, not the total value of the
output, but payment for the processing of raw material.
—Lenin

[15]
Dealing with the
question of the number of factory workers, Mr. Tugan-Baranovsky has shown
the utter uselessness of the Military Statistical Abstract data
(see his book, The Factory, etc., St. Petersburg, 1898, p. 336,
et seq., and Mir
Bozhy,[27]
1898, No. 4), and Messrs. N.—on
and Karyshev have responded with silence to his direct challenge. They
really cannot do anything else but remain silent.
—Lenin

[16]
The same sources. Some data for 1879, as already mentioned, have been
added approximately. The general data of the Directory and the
List are incomparable with each other, but here we compare
only percentages of the total number of workers and of the total
value of output, and these data in their totals are much more reliable (as
we shall show later) than the data on the total number of factories. The
estimate of large establishments is taken from Capitalism in
Russia, which the present writer is preparing for
print.[28]
—Lenin

[17]
The handicraft census for 1894-95 in Perm Gubernia
showed, for example, that with every decade of the
post-Reform period more and more small industrial establishments are being
opened in the villages. See Survey of Perm Territory. A
Sketch of the State of Handicraft Industry in Perm Gubernia.
Perm, 1896.
—Lenin

[18]
We have here another instance of the arbitrary determination of the
number of “factories” in our “newest” system of
factory statistics. The List for 1894-95 records 471 factories
for Kherson Gubernia (Mr. Karyshev, op. cit., p. 5), but for 1896
Mr. Mikulin suddenly lists as many as 1,249 “factory
establishments” (op. cit., p. Xiii), among them 773
with mechanical motive power and 109 without, employing more than 15
workers. With this unclarity in the definition of “factory”
such leaps are inevitable.
—Lenin

[19]
The only thing is that, unfortunately, we have no guarantee that the
List made this distinction strictly and consistently, i. e., that the
value of the product is shown only for those
factories that actually sell their product, and payment for processing raw
material only for those that process material belonging to others. It is
possible, for example, that in the flour-milling industry (where the
above-mentioned distinction is most frequently met with) the mill owners
should have shown either of the figures indiscriminately. This is a problem
that requires special analysis.
—Lenin

[20]
In this case we do not take the data of the Collection but
those of the Directory for t890, deducting industries subject
to excise. With the exception of these industries, the
Directory data do not differ from those of the
Collection, since they are based on the same reports of the
Department of Commerce and Manufactures. In order to expose Mr. Karyshev’s
error we need detailed data for individual factories and not only for
individual industries.
—Lenin

[21]
The article, “On the Question of Our Factory Statistics
(Professor Karyshev’s New Statistical Exploits),” was
written in August 1898 and published in the collection Economic
Studies and Essays that appeared early in October 1898. Lenin made
extensive use of the material and the conclusions of this article for his
The Development of Capitalism in Russia (Chapter V,
“The First Stages of Capitalism in Industry”; Chapter VI,
“Capitalist Manufacture and Capitalist Domestic Industry”; and
Chapter VII, “The Development of Large-Scale Machine Industry,”
Section II, “Our Factory Statistics”).

[25]Russkiye Vedomosti (Russian Recorder)— a newspaper
published in Moscow from 1863 onwards; it expressed the views of the
moderate liberal intelligentsia. Among its contributors in the ISSOs and
1890s were the democratic writers V. G. Korolenko,
M. Y. Saltykov-Shchedrin, and G. I. Uspensky. It also published items
written by
liberal Narodniks. In 1905 it became the organ of the Right wing of the
Constitutional-Democratic (Cadet) Party. Lenin said that Russkiye
Vedomosti was a peculiar combination of “Right-wing Cadetism
and a strain of Narodism” (see present edition, Vol. 19,
“Frank Speeches of a Liberal”). In 1918 the publication was closed
down together with other counter-revolutionary newspapers.

[26]Yuridichesky Vesinik (The Legal Messenger)— a monthly
magazine, bourgeois-liberal in trend, published in Moscow from 1867 to
1892.

[27]Mir Boshy (The Wide World; literally, God’s
World)— a monthly literary and popular-scientific magazine,
liberal in trend; it was published in St. Petersburg from 1892 to 1906. In
1898 the magazine carried Lenin’s review of A. Bogdanov’s A Short
Course of Economic Science (see p. 46 of this volume). From
1906 to 1918 the magazine appeared under the title Sovremenny Mir
(Contemporary World).

[28]
The reference is to Lenin’s The Development of Capitalism in
Russia (see present edition, Vol. 3).

[22]Zemstvo— the name given to the local government bodies
introduced in the central gubernias of tsarist Russia In 1864.

Thepowers of the Zemstvos were limited to purely local economic problems
(hospital and road building, statistics, insurance, etc.). Their
activities were controlled by the provincial governors and by the Ministry
of Internal Affairs, which could overrule any decisions disapproved by the
government.

[23]
The results of the first general census of the population of the Russian
Empire, taken on January 28 (February 9), 1897, were published as a series
between 1897 and 1905; in the second edition of his The Development
of Capitalism in Russia Lenin made use of them,
correcting the data on the population of a number of places.

[24]Narodism— a petty-bourgeois trend in the Russian revolution
ary movement; it began to manifest itself in the sixties and seventies of
the nineteenth century and comprised mainly progressive intellectuals
from the lower estates. With the objective of rousing the peasantry to
struggle against absolutism, the revolutionary youth “went among
the people,” to the village, gaining there, however, no support. The
Narodniks held to the view that capitalism in Russia was a fortuitous
phenomenon with no prospect of development, and that for this reason
there would be no growth and development of a Russian proletariat. The
Narodniks considered the peasantry to be the main revolutionary force and
regarded the village commune as the embryo of socialism. The Narodniks
proceeded from an erroneous view of the role of the class struggle in
historical development, maintaining that history is made by heroes, by
outstanding personalities, who are followed passively by the popular
masses.